


Through Shadows to the Edge of Night

by kaeorin



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Bedtime Stories, Erebor, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Massage, Nightmares, Nighttime, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The Lonely Mountain, Tickling, lullaby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-04-21 16:48:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22094809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: This takes place post-BOTFA. The Durins survived. But the battle still weighs heavily on all of you. When Fili’s demons drive him to wander beneath the mountain, how long can you keep your own hidden away?
Relationships: Fíli (Tolkien)/Reader
Comments: 12
Kudos: 98





	Through Shadows to the Edge of Night

The room was too small. Had it always been this small? You clenched your eyes shut tightly, trying not to imagine the walls shifting ever-closer to you in the darkness. It was like this every night. During the day, with the hundreds of different jobs you took care of, there was never enough time to notice how claustrophobic this place was. You were always running here and there, taking care of this or that, always looking for some way to make yourself useful and lighten someone else's load. There were still a lot of problems under the mountain—to be expected, really, in a city left to rot for so long—so there was always something for you to do. There was no time for fear, no time for remembering, during the day.

At night, though, that's when it all washed over you. The blood, the battle. The fear. At night, Erebor filled up with the blood of the fallen, and it threatened to choke you. Sometimes, if you'd managed to wear yourself out enough, you could pass out despite yourself, and then you only had to worry about the nightmares. They only rarely woke you up. But usually you just found yourself lying awake and trying not to hyperventilate. Trying not to picture your friends on the battlefield, not to think about all the millions of ways that things could have gone worse.

The Durins survived. Many others had fallen, but no one had been able to snuff the line of Durin. Technically. No one was the same after the battle, because how could they be? But they lived and breathed and stalked the corridors and shouldered their duties to run the city, despite the ghosts that now lived behind their eyes. Looking at them made you uncomfortable. It reminded you of what you must look like now. It made you work even harder, during the day, to keep it all tamped down.

You sat up and swung your legs over the edge of the bed, shuddering as the stony chill crept into the soles of your feet. Tonight was not going to be a night in which you would fall asleep despite yourself. You rubbed your face, idly wondering if it was too early to make your way to the kitchens and see about helping with breakfast. 

There was a sound at your door. A scratching, rustling kind of sound. If your senses weren't already on high-alert every moment of the day, you might not have heard it, but...this was your life now, so you did. Your heart pounded in your chest, but you forced the panic away. It was not an orc. It was not a dragon. It was not anything else as ridiculous as that. It was a dwarf, nothing more. Still, you had to draw in a steadying breath. The fear was too close. You didn't have the strength right now to force a smile and pretend that nothing was wrong, not even if Thorin himself were standing on the other side of that door.

But it was one of your friends. It was like you could feel the misery emanating off of them as they stood there. You couldn't leave them outside, alone. So you drew one more bracing breath and pulled on your dressing gown as you went to open the door.

It was Fili. He was standing there, leaning his forehead against the wall as though trying to draw strength from the mountain itself. His reaction was delayed, but worrisome: he yanked himself away from the door as though he thought a warg might come charging out at him. When he met your eyes, some of the terror melted away, but something dark passed over his face.

“I didn't mean to wake you.” His voice sounded rusty, like he hadn't spoken in ages. That was odd, given the fact that you'd heard him make a rousing speech to a room full of visiting nobility just this morning, but you didn't have the energy to examine it.

“I wasn't sleeping.” Neither of you missed how flat your voice sounded, especially compared to the way you spoke during the day, but all you could manage right now was an apologetic half-smile. “You should be, though.”

He lowered his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck. His whole body spoke of a bone-deep weariness that made your heart ache. “I can't sleep.” Something unspoken hovered in the air between you. “So I walk. I didn't mean to come here. I shouldn't have come here.” He started to turn away. 

You should have let him leave. But your mind flashed back to the walls of your bedroom, and how they crept ever-closer to you when you were alone, and you spoke before you'd even decided to do so: “No, you can...stay. If you want. If neither of us is sleeping, we might as well keep each other company.” You forced a smile, but even you could tell it didn't quite reach your eyes.

He seemed uncertain, but the long empty night must have loomed larger than his discomfort, because he nodded once, curtly. “Thanks.”

You stepped back, then, to let him in, and closed the door lightly behind you. But now what? You smoothed your hair back, wishing you'd just never gotten out of bed. Maybe he was thinking the same thing. He stood practically in the dead center of your room, somehow both stiff and hunched. You closed your eyes, took a moment to compose yourself. The day had simply begun early, that was all. Throwing your shoulders back and calling up that same forced air of breeziness that you used during the day, you managed to smile at him. “Well... Have a seat. If you can't sleep, you can at least rest a bit, yeah?”

You took a seat among your pillows and kicked your rumpled blankets further down the bed to make room for him. It didn't take much convincing for Fili to perch on the edge, but he didn't say anything. The silence stretched out between you, coiling and writhing and filling every nook in the room. You fidgeted with the stitching on your dressing gown. 

“How do you do it?” His voice shouldn't have been unexpected, but you flinched anyway. “After everything that's happened, there are mornings where I have to fight just to drag myself out of bed, and you...you haven't stopped once since we've been here.”

After everything that the Company had been through—the journey to the mountain, the war itself—lying to Fili made you feel uncomfortable, but...what choice did you have? “Things have to get done. I might as well be the one to do them, so someone else doesn't have to.”

“But when do you rest? Especially if you're not sleeping at night.”

“Here and there.” You didn't like this. “But you know I could say the same for you. How often do you take these late-night walks through the mountain?” Silently, you prayed to every god you'd ever heard of that he would play along. Talk about yourself, you willed him. If you're going to be here tonight, please at least just talk about yourself.

“Here and there.” He sounded grim. “If I sleep, I dream about...about things. People. The dragon. It's just easier not to.”

You nodded but didn't say anything, not sure if you could trust your voice. When you finally looked up at him, he was already studying you. Something in his eyes made your stomach churn, so you forced another smile. “That sounds hard. I'm sorry. When was the last time you slept?”

He shrugged. “It doesn't matter.”

“But it does. You're the heir of Durin. All the things that people expect from you? You can't do it all without sleep. Did you know, that's how the men torture their prisoners? Sleep deprivation? It makes them lose their minds.” You sat up on your knees and held your hands out to him. “Will you let me try something? I've done a lot of reading. I can't promise you won’t have dreams, but I have to try to help you somehow.”

He looked like he wanted to say no. If you weren't quite so desperate to keep him from focusing on you, you would never in a million years have been willing to do something like this. Even back during the days of the trek, you'd kept your distance from him—from all of the Durins, really. They had important things to worry about, and anyway, Fili had rarely even glanced your way. You were not normally one to force your presence on someone who had no interest in you. But he was here now, for whatever reason, and you couldn't shake the feeling that if you let him focus too intensely on you, he'd figure out that it was all an act.

But he didn't say no. Without even knowing exactly what it was that you were planning, Fili ducked his head and moved closer to you on the bed. You rested your hands on his shoulders for a moment, trying to gather your composure. There was a strange dwarf in your bed. You'd spent a lot of time in very close proximity to him, but you didn't really know him. This was weird—intensely, irreparably weird. But you swallowed hard and shifted so you were behind him so you could gather his wild hair into your hands. You combed trembling fingertips through it. It wasn't nearly as snarled as you'd thought it would be, but, then again, he was royalty. He couldn't show up to one of his many meetings with a rat's nest on his head. Still, you worked your fingers through it slowly, carefully, taking the time to stroke your fingers along his scalp each time you did. After a while, Fili let out a sigh, and his shoulders seemed to relax a little. It was a start, anyway.

Not long after that, you dropped your hands to his shoulders, and squeezed them cautiously. You knew nothing about Fili's stress or where he carried it, but most of the time lately, your own shoulders ached something awful. When he choked out a moan, you jerked your hands away, worried that you'd hurt him. “I'm sorry!”

“No, it's...good. Please don't stop.” His voice sounded uncharacteristically small. “I didn't know how badly I needed that until just now.”

Still not completely sure of yourself, you put your hands back on him and continued what you were doing. It sounded like Fili was trying not to moan again, but every once in a while, as you worked out a particularly stubborn knot, he'd groan quietly.

When you'd done about all you thought you could do for his shoulders, you moved away from him again. “You should lie down,” you said, your voice sounding too sharp, too loud in the stillness that had fallen between you. “Er...so I can get the rest of your back, I mean.”

Even now, you half-expected him to protest, maybe flee from the room, but he just nodded and turned to stretch out on his stomach with his face in your pillows. The sight did strange things to your stomach, but you pushed it away and got to work. Coaxing the knots out of his back required just enough of your strength and just enough of your attention that you couldn't really focus on anything else. It was almost peaceful. 

Maybe because his face was hidden, maybe because you were working the physical tension out of his body, maybe simply because he needed to, Fili began to speak. He told you things that you couldn't imagine him telling anybody else: frustrations with all the meetings and all the visitors, uncertainties that plagued him daily, the way the battle still haunted him. Some of it was hard to listen to, but you held your tongue and let him speak. To his credit, he did try again and again to ask you questions, find out how you were settling into the city, but you continued to do your best to deflect them all. This wasn't the time. Maybe there wasn't a time at all. 

Before long, Fili's voice slowed down, and the pauses between his words began to stretch out. He was falling asleep. An exhausted, sleepy sort of pride rose up in you. When he finally began snoring, you sat back and simply looked at him for a bit. His hair was silk in the flickering torchlight, and the gentle rise and fall of his back with each breath further soothed you. Would it be strange, to fall asleep beside the stranger you once battled beside? Sometimes your bedrolls had been fairly close, during the journey. And it was your bed. It'd be fine. You pulled one of your blankets up over Fili's back, and wrapped another around your own body as you curled up as close to the edge of the bed as you could manage. Briefly, as you slipped into sleep, you thought of the threat of nightmares, but you slept soundly.

Some time later, after the torches had burned out, you were awakened by a movement in the bed. The frightened squeak escaped your lips before you were awake enough to stop it, but then you recognized Fili's silhouette in front of you. He'd gotten out of bed—that must have been what woke you up—and now stooped before you a bit. “I'll go to my own room now,” he said in a low voice. “I'm...sorry, if I made you uncomfortable tonight, but I can't thank you enough for what you've done.”

“It's alright,” you said. “Anytime. I mean it. I don't mind. Sleep well, Fili.” 

“And you as well.” He hesitated for a moment but then, in one swift motion, moved forward to press a chaste kiss to your forehead. Before you could really process what had just happened, he stepped back again, and fled through the door. By that time, it didn't really seem to matter anymore. Ignoring the heat that had risen into your cheeks, you turned onto your other side and pulled the pillows closer, falling back into that same dreamless sleep.

***

Not much changed for you after that night, which was...kind of a blessing. You still avoided all of the Durins as much as you could, though you were more likely to offer a half-smile and a wave if you happened to make eye contact with them. There were some from the original Company who seemed to have been bonded more tightly together by the battle, but your decision to avoid them was not out of the ordinary either. It was easier to surround yourself with strangers. You still spent your days trying to tire yourself out enough that you wouldn't be plagued by the what-might-have-beens and the ones you'd lost. 

Fili still came to your room, some nights. It wasn't often, but when he showed up, he always looked as though he hadn't slept in days. Each night went more or less the same as the first: usually, you would be the one to open the door to him after catching some hint of his presence. He seldom knocked. You worried that there were nights that you didn't hear him, didn't open the door to him, and that he went on his way on those nights, wandering the darkened corridors rather than raising his hand to knock. When he came in, you always ushered him to sit on your bed, and he always ended up lying face-down among your pillows as you worked the tension out of his muscles. He talked to you until he fell asleep, and when he started snoring, you covered him and fell asleep beside him.

Every night, he would wake up hours later and thank you, and apologize for making you uncomfortable, but the only thing that really made you all that uncomfortable was how peacefully you slept next to him. On your own, you started sleeping even more lightly than you had before—because now you were constantly straining your ears for any telltale sign that Fili was outside the door. When he was already sleeping in your bed, however, there was no need to listen for him. Now and then, you toyed with the idea of telling him what he'd done to your sleep schedule and asking him to simply knock on your door, or else join you every night, but you would have died before ever actually breathing a word of it to him.

One night, after finally falling into a restless sleep, you slipped into a nightmare. It was the usual types of horrors: fallen friends shambling towards you from the battlefield. Currents of blood chasing you down the corridors and drowning you. Watching your friends—even the ones who had survived—cut down while you stood frozen in the middle of everything. That was the worst part. It didn't happen often, but when it did, it felt real. Ice would creep through your veins as though you had been frozen to the ground. Even when blood, flung at you from the blades of your enemies, splattered into your face, it felt cold. People would call out to you, but you couldn't even turn your head to see them. Their voices would grow louder, more desperate, even angry—why aren't you doing anything?—until it was nothing but a cacophony of voices. And then it would stop. The world would grow still around you. 

It always ended the same way: you stood there, screaming the names of your friends who had gone silent, begging them to forgive you, until footsteps squelched behind you. Someone would laugh, and the sound always sent you to your knees. You never saw their face, only the gory tip of their axe, dripping with your blood as they thrust it through your back.

Tonight, however, the dream didn't get that far. Just before the footsteps approached you, someone shook you awake. Panicking, you swiped out at whoever was touching you, and your fist just barely made contact before they caught your wrist. That only made it worse. You choked out some kind of strangled noise and tried to sit up, but they were too close. When you tried to free your arm, they only held it tighter, and gripped your shoulder with their other hand. 

“Just kill me already, you son of a bitch,” you finally spat at them in the darkness. Already the adrenaline was starting to fade, leaving you feeling heavy and useless. “What are you doing?”

He whispered your name, and the sound of his voice simultaneously snapped you back into reality and made you want to melt through the floor. Fili. You let your arm go limp. There was probably no hope of playing this off. You covered your eyes with your free hand. “I'm sorry, Fili. Did I hurt you?”

Finally he loosened his grip on your wrist, but, rather than releasing you entirely, he folded your hand in his. “You were screaming. Howling, even. I thought someone was hurting you.”

If only. You would have laughed dryly, if you'd had the strength. All you could really do was sigh. “No, it was just a stupid dream. I'm fine.”

He lowered his mouth to your hand, and for a brief, dizzying minute, you thought maybe he was going to kiss it, but he only blew warm breath against your skin. “You're freezing. Are you sure you're okay?”

“It's nothing.” You tried to sit up again, and this time he backed away enough to let you. This was mortifying. Surely he'd come here for help falling asleep, not to coddle you after your own stupid nightmare. “Sit down.”

To your relief, he did. But he wouldn’t stop looking at you like that. You climbed up onto your knees to take your place behind him. Maybe if you really focused on combing through his hair, you could distract him from the scene he’d just witnessed. If nothing else, kneeling behind him kept him from being able to look at you.

His back stayed stiff long past the time that he would normally have relaxed into your touch. Your heart leapt into your throat. It would have been easy to blame this on yourself, to believe that you were so focused on your own situation that you weren’t helping him relax, but you knew better than that. He was still thinking about you. Your stupid, childish nightmare. You weren’t sure what to say for yourself.

“How often does that happen?” he finally asked, just as the silence threatened to choke you.

“Here and there. I’m fine. It’s just a dream.” Even you could tell that the airiness in your voice was too forced to be real, but you would die before you told one of the princes of Durin that the battle was still haunting you. _You._ You were a nobody. You hardly even did anything in the battle, besides look on as too many people died. “What’s keeping you from sleep tonight?”

“Don’t _do_ that.” He sounded distressed. He reached behind him to bat at you gently, to push you away, so you dropped your hands and scooted away. When he turned to face you, he looked so much older than he truly was. The night had been unkind to him. “Why do you do that? Any time I ask a personal question like that, you try to change the subject. What were you dreaming about?”

Without meaning to, you glanced up at the door. Running was impractical. At best, you’d look like a frightened insect scurrying for the cover of darkness. At worst, Fili could easily catch you before you made it out the door. Maybe it was better to stop evading his questions, at least for now. Let him realize what a mess you were, so he could leave. 

“What else? The battle. The people we lost.” Your traitorous brain conjured up memories of the dream: mangled corpses of the people you should have saved and the way their faces and voices accused you. You shrugged one shoulder as you inspected your bedspread.

“You told me to kill you. Is that—Did you…? The ones we lost, they were friends. Do they attack you in your dreams?” Frustration stabbed through you at the tone of his voice. You were willing to bet that every other person who had been in that battle had dreams like this, so why did Fili sound so taken aback?

But you kept your temper under control. There was absolutely no use in snapping at him. He was at least as exhausted and miserable as you were, if not even more so. Hell, he’d come here tonight looking for comfort and had instead been pulled into all this with you. He didn’t want this any more than you did. “No… They’re just asking for help. And then...at the end, they ask why I didn’t help. And then I get hit with an axe, but I never just _die_.” The threat of tears was burning in your eyes, but you forced yourself not to blink, not to look around, not to do a single thing that could encourage the tears to fall. The two of you sat in silence for a while as you gripped your blanket with white knuckles.

Finally, he reached over and closed one hand over yours. He was so warm. It caught you off guard. “When was the last time you slept? Really slept, without a nightmare?” 

It was easy to remember, but somewhat harder to admit. “The last time you were here.” Whether it was the work of easing his muscles, the low tone of his voice as he spoke to you, or simply the fact that someone was there with you, you had never once had a nightmare while sleeping beside him. He closed his fingers a little more tightly around your hand. Maybe your answer had surprised him. 

“Can I touch you?” His voice was even more quiet than it had been. “Like you do for me.”

Oh, goodness. You held your hands up in front of yourself as though you could ward him off and shook your head. “Fili, no. You didn’t come here for that. It’s okay, I’m fine.”

He would not be deterred. If anything, your refusal only spurred him on. He reached to slide his fingers between yours and then gently tugged on your arms until you were leaning closer to him. “It is not your job to take care of everyone all the time. You earned your place here along with everyone else.” His eyes burned into yours, but you couldn’t look away. “You’re still trembling. Let me soothe you this time.”

A large, stubborn part of you wanted to keep on refusing. Others here had it worse than you. Fili had it worse than you. But he was gripping your hands tightly and yet...gently. And he was so warm. Your pride gave way, and you lowered your gaze. “Okay,” you finally said, almost speaking through your teeth. “But only until you get tired.”

The next few minutes were excruciatingly awkward, as the two of you tried to maneuver around each other and figure out how you should sit. Finally you found yourself with your legs dangling off of your mattress while Fili sat right behind you with his legs on either side of you. It was still awkward, but it was the best way for him to be able to reach your shoulders, and you could just make out the warmth that radiated from his torso. 

“Alright?” His voice was startlingly close behind you, and you flinched a little even though he sounded almost as twitchy as you felt. You nodded slowly.

“I swear, you really don’t have to do this.” Even now, he could back out and sit where he normally sat so that you could work the tension out of _his _muscles. Why did that feel so much easier than this?

“You punched me, love.” He rested his chin on your shoulder. You could hear a smile in his voice, but you didn’t trust yourself to turn your head and look at him. “_Someone_ needs to do this. It looks like I’m the one who gets the honors.”

You wouldn’t have thought it would have been so easy to adjust to Fili’s hands on you, but there was something in his touch that just felt right. He squeezed your shoulders gently at first, seemingly getting familiar with the feel of you, but it didn’t take long for him to zero in on the tender spots. Maybe that was because everything was a tender spot. Working carefully, he sought and soothed tension that had been a part of you for so long that you’d almost forgotten about it. 

He learned your body language quickly. When he spent so long working on a particularly stubborn spot that your skin grew sore and you needed a break, he paused without your having to ask. His touch remained gentle in those places even after he’d continued working elsewhere. From time to time, you were unable to muffle your relieved moans, but Fili, ever the noble, had the grace to let them pass unacknowledged. 

“Poor thing, you’re all knots back here,” he said after a while. He sounded incredulous. “Hasn’t anyone ever done this for you before? Even before the journey, maybe?”

You tried not to laugh at the thought of asking one of your friends or family members from before the journey to rub your back. However, you answered him with a simple “No.” There was more that you wanted to say, not the least of which was gentle teasing about the fact that he was a royal and you were nothing, but you held your tongue. It would serve no purpose.

“Then I am glad that I was here tonight.” After some time, his grip softened somewhat, and then it faded almost entirely, so that he was merely stroking your back through your nightshirt. “All those nights that I came here to you...” You hated how remorseful he sounded, but there was something in his touch that kept you from interrupting. “Nights when you were dealing with pain of your own, and you never let a single trace of it show on your face. I let you touch me and listen to me ramble endlessly, and you never said a word. I had no idea. I am so sorry.”

His hands had fallen still, and now rested heavily against you. His warmth still radiated through your clothing as though he were touching your bare skin. Without really thinking about it, you reached up to touch his hand lightly. “That was on purpose, you know. I didn’t want anyone to know. I still don’t.”

“Not even me?” There was mischief in his voice now, and you laughed a little—though humourlessly—as you ducked your head. You _especially _didn’t want him to know, even if he could make quick work of the soreness in your muscles.

His hands traveled lower down your back, still just touching, almost exploring. He followed the curve of your waist, the flare of your hips. Any other night, in any other situation, you knew that this intimacy would make you unbearably uncomfortable. It was too much. It was inappropriate. But then he pressed his thumbs into the small of your back, where you distinctly remembered aching the most during the journey, and a sharp hiss distracted you from any thoughts of impropriety.

“Just as I thought. You’re still wonky from the ponies. You ride funny, you know that?” He moved away and you tried not to mourn the loss of his warmth, instead turning to narrow your eyes at him.

“I do not, and even if I did, how would you possibly know that?” He’d always kept his distance from you, and you’d never really spared that a second thought.

It was his turn to evade your question. He squeezed your shoulder. “Lie on your belly, lass. I’ll get your lower back all sorted out so maybe I can teach you to ride properly some day.”

You wanted to press him on how he’d developed these opinions about your riding style, but you let it pass. Turnabout was fair play, after all, and you were well-practiced in avoiding a person’s questions. You did as he asked, stretching out on your stomach. This position was just as awkward as the one before it, but if you kept your face turned away from him, maybe he wouldn’t notice the burning in your cheeks. “While you do, will you at least tell me what brought you here tonight? I want to listen.”

At first, he busied himself with mapping the muscles of your lower back. These seemed somehow more knotted and tender than your shoulders had. You tried not to give away your discomfort, to fist your hand silently in your sheets as you buried your face against your pillow, but he knew anyway. A few times, he clucked like a disappointed mother, but he did not gloat over your pain. Here and there, he even apologized under his breath for something he’d done. As though you could blame him.

Finally, though, he did begin to speak. He, Kili, and Thorin had been deep in disagreement for the last few nights, and it was keeping them and the rest of the council from moving forward with any of their projects. He was frustrated with his uncle’s inability to compromise and his brother’s inability to see the good in Thorin’s position, and most of the time he left their meetings aggravated and upset. 

“What is a Durin if not a boulder which refuses to yield?” You mumbled it under your breath, halfway hoping he wouldn’t even hear it. Of course he did, and paused what he was doing. “They’ll work it out in the end, you know that. They’ve both got the citizens’ best interests at heart.”

“That part may be right, but are you implying that the Durins are _boulders_? How dare you?!” He sounded scandalized, but you could hear the laughter just beneath his words. Without warning, he dug his fingers into your sides, hard enough to tickle without actually hurting you. You squirmed and protested, but couldn’t quite get out of his reach. He swung one leg over yours to pin you down more fully as he continued his assault. 

“I didn’t mean it!” You finally shouted between your gasps for breath. “Of _course _the Durins aren’t boulders. I’ve never met anyone as easygoing or wishy-washy as the lot of you!” You got a grip on one of his hands, but you couldn’t quite hold him tightly enough to keep him from tickling you. 

“That’s no better!” What little strength had originally been in his voice had long since been melted away by his own laughter. When you caught his hand again, he merely twisted around so that his fingers were folded between yours, and pinned your hand to the mattress. You liked his laugh. It had been too long since you’d heard it. It was almost enough to make you not want him to stop tickling you. _Almost_. He leaned down over you so that his mouth was closer to you. “Take it back.”

“Which part?” Maybe you weren’t quite ready to submit to him. He growled in your ear, and you could only hope that he didn’t notice the goosebumps that erupted in the wake of his breath. He redoubled his efforts, digging his fingers in around your ribs in just the right way to make you squeal. “Okay, fine!” Between your exertion and his insistence, you were growing breathless. “I take it back! You’re not a boulder and you’re not wishy-washy! None of you are! Especially you!”

His hand fell blessedly still, and he rolled himself off of you with a heavy sigh. The two of you lay motionless for a few moments, simply trying to catch your breath. “You’ve a lovely laugh. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard it.”

“I think I could say the same thing for you.” Slowly and carefully, you rolled over onto your side, and propped your head up on one hand. The circles under Fili’s eyes were still alarmingly-present, but there was a light in his eyes that you hadn’t seen in a long time. When he caught you looking, neither of you looked away. He smiled faintly and reached out to push some of your hair behind your ear.

“I think you’re right.” If, only a few months ago, someone were to tell you that you would find yourself lying in bed beside Fili of the line of Durin and not feeling the least bit awkward or uncomfortable, you might have laughed them back to whatever nuthouse they’d come from. But here you were. He crossed his arms behind his head and raised his gaze to the ceiling. He was quiet for a long time—long enough that you found yourself checking his face to see if he’d fallen asleep. This time, when he caught you, he winked at you and closed his eyes again. “It’s just occurred to me. You’re like the sun.”

His words confused you. You leaned back a bit, to put a little more distance between the two of you. “The sun? The big bright burny thing in the sky that burns your skin and makes it hard to sleep?” Sleep-deprivation was a problem, you knew, but he wasn’t quite making sense.

He laughed quietly. “Yeah, the big bright burny thing. The one that lights up the shadows and shows you what’s really there. The one that lets plants grow and keeps little ones warm when they play outside. The one no one gives a second thought to until they’re uncomfortable or it’s gone.” He let out a long slow breath and turned his head to look at you. His eyelids were heavy, but his eyes were sharp as he studied your face. “I’m so sorry I didn’t check in sooner, love. But I know better now.”

Your face burned much like the sun itself, and your gaze skittered past him, around the room, looking for something—anything—to land on instead of on his eyes. You sputtered a bit, rather humiliatingly, as you cast about for something to say. Your usual standbys—“Don’t worry about me,” “I’m fine,” and “I don’t need anything”—seemed glaringly untruthful now that he’d caught you in the depths of your terror. 

Thankfully, he took pity on you and sat up to tug one of your blankets over the two of you. This was the first time you’d shared a blanket with him rather than wrapping yourself in one of your spares after he’d already fallen asleep, but it was...alright. Maybe even more than that. When he laid back down, he looked at you again, as though checking to make sure that this was okay. You smiled in response and let your head rest against your pillow.

“I was thinking...” In truth, you’d started speaking before you’d really decided to. At that point, it became too late to take the words back, so you swallowed hard and carried on. “I said earlier that I sleep better when you’re here. Do you—is that, you know...at all true for you?”

He turned on his side to face you, and you suddenly realized just how close he actually was. Moving almost idly, he reached to pull the blanket up to cover your shoulder, and then nodded with a faint smile.

Relief flooded through you at that. It might have been an obvious question, but you hadn’t wanted to presume, especially with someone like Fili. You reached up to tuck him in, similar to the way he’d just done for you, and wet your lips. “Okay. Then maybe...you don’t need to get up to leave so early. I think it might be better for you to just...sleep through the night. It doesn’t make me uncomfortable, and if we’re both sleeping better, isn’t that...good?” Of course, as soon as you finished speaking, your anxious brain kicked into gear, running through any number of alternative reasons that he might have actually had for leaving when he did. “I mean, only if you want. If you have to leave for something else, like something royal or—or something personal, then I completely understand and—”

He saved you from yourself by reaching out under the covers to take your hand. The touch surprised you into falling silent, and when you looked up at him, amusement had curled the corners of his mouth. “I understand.” He brushed his thumb tenderly across the back of your hand. Pleasant chills ran up and down your spine. “Thank you. I’ll be here in the morning.”

“Well.” An odd, quiet pleasure filled your body at his statement, but it felt strange to let him know that. You worried your lower lip between your teeth for a moment, mostly stalling until you could get yourself back under control, and then you offered him another smile. “So will I.”

He squeezed your hand, and didn’t let go. When you slept, there was only warmth.


End file.
